


just let go (and float away)

by trippingtozier



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: BUT IT DOES HAVE A HAPPY ENDING !!!! YAY???, F/M, M/M, Oops?, and he gets to decide whether he stays or goes, anyway-, argh i feel like this is really bad, but he doesn't want to decide cuz that's a huge ass decision, he honestly just needs a hug from eddie, richie gets into a car accident, so this is sadder than i originally planned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 20:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16839742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trippingtozier/pseuds/trippingtozier
Summary: Eddie closes his eyes, but the lids are puffy and pink. They betray that he’s been crying.“Please don’t make me one of those pathetic, sad-sack, widowed boyfriends.”He covers his face with his hands and takes deep breaths to steady himself. “You listen to me, Richard fucking Tozier.”Richie sits up, as much as he can without feeling the growing exhaustion. He listens.“Stay.”He wants to tell Eddie three words. Three tiny, seemingly insignificant words since they’ve been said so many times before: "I love you."





	just let go (and float away)

**Author's Note:**

> This is very much inspired by If I Stay because I adore that book

You wouldn’t expect the radio to work afterwards, but it does.

His truck is eviscerated. The impact of the four-ton eight wheeler smashing into the passenger side had the force of an atomic bomb. The doors are gone, the passenger seat is through the drivers window. The wheels and hubcaps are gone. The truck bed is twisted like a spiral noodle.

There was so much noise. Grinding, popping, the sound of glass shattering and metal whining against metal. Then it went quiet, except for this: Bohemian Rhapsody, still playing. The car radio is still somehow attached to its battery, and so Queen plays eerily into the once uneventful February morning.

At first he figures everything is fine. For one, he can still hear Queen. Then there’s the fact that he’s standing there in a ditch on the side of the road. When he looks down, the jeans, hawaiian shirt, and Converse he put on that morning all look the same as they did when he left Eddie’s house.

He climbs out of the ditch to get a better look at the truck. His beloved truck isn’t even a truck anymore. It’s a metal skeleton.

He turns around, facing the ditch where he came from to spy a hand sticking out. When he gets closer, he sees a beaded bracelet tied around the wrist. From where he’s standing, he notices that the bracelet spells out ‘trashy.’ The bracelet looks like the one Bev had made him, along with all the other Losers, during the summer she did camp counseling. That’s _his_ bracelet. He was wearing it this morning. He looks down at his wrist. He’s _still_ wearing it now.

He edges closer, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Richie is staring a worse-off Richie. The blood from his chest has seeped through his bright shirt and jeans, and is now pooling beneath his body on the pure, white snow. One of his legs is askew, bending unnaturally in several places, and one of his sneakers is missing, along with most of the skin on his right foot. His eyes are closed, and his curls are matted with blood.

He spins away. This isn’t right. This can’t be right. This cannot be happening. This has to be one of those vivid nightmares that he has on nights when Eddie’s not around. He stares down at his wrist, the one that’s free of blood and shards of glass, and pinches as hard as he can.

He doesn’t feel a thing.

 _“Wake up! Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup!”_ He screams into the cold air. _“This is a fucking nightmare! Wake up! Please wake up!”_

But he doesn’t. He can’t.

_“Am I dead?”_

He hates having to ask himself this. It’s such a stupid question.

The paramedics are here now, along with the police and the fire department.

The Richie who was lying in the ditch is now lying on the edge of the road. He’s surrounded by a frantic team of men and women. They’re poking him, putting IVs and tubes into his chest and his arms and his mouth. If it weren’t for the tubes, he wouldn’t be breathing. A woman has to pump air into one of the tubes so that his lungs trick themselves into working.

His whole body seems to be completely numb as he watches the scene before him, but from the look of other Richie’s leg, he should be in agony.

They load him into the ambulance. The woman who pumps his air with one hand checks his IVs with the other. She smooths a curl away from his forehead.

“You hang in there,” she tells him.

There are apparently a lot of things wrong with fucked up Richie. He has a collapsed lung, ruptured spleen, internal bleeding of various kinds, contusions on the brain. He also has broken ribs, a shattered leg, cuts all along his arms and his face.

Blood is everywhere. If he could, he’d throw up, but he can’t. He can’t do much of anything in this state. This blob of nothingness that he’s become. The doctors aren’t fazed by his appearance. They slice, and sew, and suction, and monitor, and give more blood to make up for all the blood he’s losing.

This is their normal.

They move him out of surgery and into the ICU.

In the waiting room, his emergency contact sits. He’s eternally grateful. Knowing that Bill’s there puts him at ease. It helps calm the churning feeling in his stomach.

A nurse lets Bill know that Richie’s in “grave” condition. Grave sounds bad. Grave is where you go when things don’t work out in the ICU.

“Is there anyone you can call?” the nurse asks.

Bill nods numbly. “I’ve already c-called our f-f-friends. T-th-they’re on t-their way.”

Eddie.

He wants to see Eddie.

He finds his ICU bed, and stands over the lifeless Richie.

_“Keep your shit stable, do you hear me? Eds is on his way.”_

He’s ecstatic when Bev arrives; he’s happy to see the familiar glow of her fiery red hair in its short, curly form.

Ben is with her. He’s red-faced, like he’s been crying or is about to cry. Bev grips his hand until she sees Bill, and then she rushes over to comfort their friend.

They let Bev in to see Richie for about three minutes.

She stands over his hospital bed with her hands clasped tightly. “Please don’t die. I can understand why you’d want to, but think about this: no one else can think of inappropriate mom jokes like you can.” She wipes away a single tear with the back of her hand. “God, I never thought I’d say this, but I’d kill to hear one of your ill-timed jokes about Eddie’s mom.”

“Hey, Rich,” Mike says quietly.

Stan and Mike sit in silence beside his bedside in the shitty hospital chairs that make your ass feel numb after a while. Stan is sitting very still, and his hands are shaking.

“Do you think he decides?”

“Decides what?”

Stan looks distressed. “Decides whether he stays here or not.”

“I wish I knew.”

“This might sound stupid, but I think he’s running the show.”

_Running the show._

Stan’s words make something click in his head.

If he stays. If he lives. If he dies. If he gives up. It’s all up to him.

 _He_ decides.

How is he supposed to decide this when _this_ terrifies him more than anything? And where the hell is Eds?

Eddie’s here. Walking into the hospital, hugging his arms against his tiny frame.

Since the beginning of this, he’s been imagining Eddie’s arrival, but now that he’s actually here, Richie feels paralyzed. In his fantasy world, he rushes to greet him and somehow Eddie feels his presence, like in Ghost. But he knows that’s just a fantasy.

He’s scared to see Eddie. To see his face. If he is crying, it _will_ kill him. Forget this _I decide_ bullshit. That alone will do him in.

He watches Eddie make his way to the waiting room. His face, illuminated by the horrible hospital lighting, is blank, like someone wiped all of his emotions away with an eraser. He doesn’t look like Eddie. But at least he’s not crying.

“What do you mean I can’t go in?” Eddie’s voice is high and hysterical.

Richie listens to an orderly explain that he’s not been given access to view the patient by the patient’s emergency contact.

Bill’s left to go down to the cafeteria, so he can’t step in.

“This is bullshit!” Eddie yells.

Stan and Mike look at each other, their eyes wary.

“I need to see him!”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible right now, young man.”

“But my boyfriend, Richie, he’s-”

He feels the need to protect Eddie. He reaches for him on instinct, even though he cannot really touch him. But his back is to him now. His shoulders are hunched over, his legs starting to buckle.

Bev, who was hovering near the wall, is suddenly at his side, her arms encircling around Eddie’s falling form. “When Bill comes back, he’s going to fix this, Eddie. I promise.”

He’s staring at himself, at the “live” Richie now, lying in his hospital bed. He feels a burst of fury bubble up in his chest. If he could, he’d slap his own lifeless face.

Instead, he sits down in the chair beside his bed and closes his eyes, wishing all of this away.

As it turns out, Stan is right.

He controls this. He’s in charge.

Richie’s monitors are bleeping as a nurse runs in.

“His BP and pulse are dropping,” she yells. “Code blue! Code blue in trauma!”

Doctors are racing towards his bed, wide eyed and startled.

They work rapidly to detach the monitors and catheters and run another tube down his throat. Another nurse runs into the room with a gurney, which they heave him onto, and then they’re gone into the maze of hallways heading for the emergency OR. This time, he decides to stay behind in the ICU.

He’s back where he started. Lifeless Richie is back in the ICU. He wants to be like his body, quiet and stiff, putty in someone else’s hands.

He doesn’t have the energy for this decision. He doesn’t want this anymore.

Every cell in his blob-state is grateful when Bev and Stan march into his room.

“You’ve sure got us on a roller-coaster ride today,” Bev says lightly. “As usual, you’re the center of attention, Rich.”

“Uh, maybe not the best thing to say to a dying guy,” Stan says, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m only kidding. Richie would appreciate it. Him and his trashouth are probably laughing internally right now.”

Bev pulls the chair up closer to the bed and starts combing her fingers through Richie’s curls. Stan stands beside her, biting his bottom lip. “I want him to come back, Bev. That’s something I never ever thought I’d want.”

“Tell that to him, not me.”

Bev scoots the chair over, giving Stan room to pull the other chair over. He does.

“Um, hey, Rich,” he starts. He leans over so that he can whisper something in Richie’s ear. “It’s okay, you know, if you want to go, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t. I want you to stay. Really bad. But,” Stan’s crying, stumbling over his words, “if you need to just let go and float away, or whatever, that’s okay. It’s okay to stop fighting.”

Richie feels something inside of himself break. He feels himself breathe. Relief and understanding fill him. Stan gets it. Stan is the first person today to acknowledge what he’s actually going through.

_“Thank you.”_

“In you go,” someone says briskly. Richie hears the curtain that’s drawn across his ICU room open, and then close.

He forces his head up and opens his eyes. Eddie. God, even in this state, he’s beautiful.

When he first sees the battered-Richie, he falters. He does look pretty bad, hooked up to all the ventilators and a dozen other tubes. But after a moment, Eddie exhales loudly, and then he’s regular old Eds.

Eddie sits down, and takes Richie’s hand into his, careful not to disturb any of the IVs. “Jesus, Rich, your hands are freezing.”

He’s so tired. He can barely keep his eyes open. But he’s trying. Trying for Eds. He’s trying to delay the inevitable.

Eddie closes his eyes, but the lids are puffy and pink. They betray that he’s been crying.

“Please don’t make me one of those pathetic, sad-sack, widowed boyfriends.”

He covers his face with his hands and takes deep breaths to steady himself. “You listen to me, Richard fucking Tozier.”

Richie sits up, as much as he can without feeling the growing exhaustion. He listens.

“Stay.”

He wants to tell Eddie three words. Three tiny, seemingly insignificant words since they’ve been said so many times before.

_“I love you.”_

“Don’t leave me. I can’t lose you like this. What happened is really fucked up, and I know you probably want to let go, but you shouldn’t. You should stay.”

Something inside of him implodes.

He’s sitting around Bill’s breakfast table with the Losers, drinking coffee, laughing at Ben’s morning hair.

He’s sitting on a bench, holding Eddie’s hand for the first time since they decided to give a relationship a try.

He’s lying next to Eddie, the smaller boy’s head on his chest, holding him tightly.

He’s walking to the Barrens with Bev, the trees summer leaves casting shadows on their faces as they share a smoke.

He’s holding one of Mike’s barn kittens on his lap, tickling it behind it’s ears as the others giggle and coo ‘awww.’

He’s applauding and whooping wildly at Stan’s impromptu Bar Mitzvah speech while his mother tries to tug him back into their pew.

The memories of his life as it was, and the flashes of everything worth living for, are coming so fast and furious.

There is a blinding flash, a pain that rips through his chest for one searing moment, a silent scream from his broken body. For the first time, he can sense how fully agonizing staying will be.

But then he feels Eddie’s hand. Not sense it, but feel it. He’s not sitting in a stupid hospital chair anymore. He’s laying on his back in the hospital bed.

Eddie is crying and somewhere inside of him, he knows he’s crying, too, because he’s finally feeling things again. Physical pain, the pain of loss and shock, and everything crashing into him all at once. But also all that he has in his life, all the love, and support, and the hope of the future.

And suddenly he just _needs_ to grasp Eddie’s hand more than he’s ever needed anything else in the entirety of the world. Not just to be held by it, but to hold it back. This is hard. He’s weak, and this is so so hard. He summons all the love he’s ever felt, all the strength, and the breath he’s been holding, and he focuses all of that into the fingers of his right hand.

And then he squeezes.

Eddie’s grip tightens, and Richie hears the sharp intake of his breath followed by the softness of his voice. It’s the first time since this whole ordeal that Richie can truly hear him.

“You stayed.”

**Author's Note:**

> please give feedback !! I'll appreciate you for life


End file.
